Ralph Blane, a composer and lyricist who, with Hugh Martin, created the songs for one of Hollywood's most beloved musicals, "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944), died yesterday at his home in Broken Arrow, Okla., the town where he was born.

Cy Feuer, the celebrated producer who gave theatergoers some of Broadway's most beloved musicals, including "Guys and Dolls," "Can-Can" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," died yesterday at his home in Manhattan.

D2 OBITUARIES A26-27 Cy Feuer The celebrated producer who gave theatergoers some of Broadway's most beloved musicals, including "Guys and Dolls," and "Can-Can," he was 95.

(Scott) 'RENT' (PG-13, 135 minutes) Jonathan Larson's beloved musical is as loud, earnest and sentimental as ever.

Why strip a beloved musical of the very thing that makes it beloved?

"Musicals require special care, particularly because many of the most beloved musicals are in Tehnicolor or another color process and have complex soundtracks," she said.

She added that her father, before achieving fame as the composer of many of the nation's most beloved musicals "nearly went into the underwear business."

That is, "Bells Are Ringing," the beloved Styne-Comden-Green musical of 1956 is revving up for a long overdue Broadway rerun, and it is not at Goodspeed, which had it in 1990.

This elegiac survey of 1950's cinema largely steers clear of beloved musicals and westerns, preferring to dwell on misunderstood or less conventional films - relishing, for example, James Mason's portrayal of a cortisone-popping schoolteacher in "Bigger Than Life."

In David Leveaux's handsomely mounted, antiseptically acted revival of this beloved musical of Jewish life in turn-of-the-century Russia, the ensemble members go through their paces of song, dance and Yiddish humor with a bland, dutiful cheer that rarely turns into anything more robust.